Pantyhose articles are known to be manufactured by joining two stocking, the portion of each stocking being subjected to a longitudinal cut of predetermined length and the two stockings being sewn together afterwards in correspondence of the cut edges. To this purpose, the stockings are fitted onto corresponding flat paired supporting shapes which allows them to be moved between a plurality of distirct loading, positioning, cutting, sewing and unloading stations of a horizontal carrousel machine so-called pantyhose-seamer or liner-closer.
Machines for the formation of pantyhose articles are described, for example, in the U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,444,140, 5,345,889 and 4,303,026.
Also known is the fact that in order to form items such as pantyhose articles starting from stockings having toes already seamed, it is necessary to suitably positioning and orienting the articles on the respective supporting shapes, so that the seam line of the toe in correspondence of each stocking and the sewing line for joining the edges which is to form the bodice will be suitably oriented with respect to one another; failing this, the article would result of poor quality by having the toe improperly oriented with respect to the bodice.
The sewing of the stocking toe is carried out by so-called toe-closer machines such as those described in the U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,014,634, 5,272,993 and 4,020,775.
The U.S Pat. No. 5,564,609 describes an apparatus able to position articles such as stockings for pantyhose articles, comprising rollers acting from the outside on the articles in the process of formation to drive them into rotation about their respective longitudinal axes and thus orienting them according to a predetermined reference. A drawback arising from the use of this known positioning apparatus lies in the fact that the compression exerted by the rollers on the fabric of the article being positioned is cause for a considerable localized deformation of the fabric stitches, this drawback being more serious in case of light and delicate fabrics which do not consent the spontaneous elastic recovery of the deformation. Besides, the positioning of the article is only partially automatic since it is necessary to dispose the articles on the relevant support shapes in a precise initial arrangement.